I finally made it to the Broccoli City Festival and these are my biggest takeaways

The Broccoli City Festival has been a bucket list item for me ever since it debuted right in my backyard of Washington, D.C., in 2013.

Back then, I was too broke and too laser-focused on getting a journalism job to worry about attending. By 2016, that ambition had me living in Connecticut and too disconnected to keep up with festivals. I was ready to dive back into the scene after attending Dreamville in 2019 and moving back to D.C. in 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of two straight Broccoli City festivals.

That brings us to this past weekend. I finally made it to Broccoli City.

This year, like past years, I had prior engagements for the weekend, but I wasn’t about to miss another opportunity to see what the decade-long buildup of rave has been about. So I made time for a drive to the RFK Stadium Festival grounds for the first day of the weekend-long event and these are my takeaways, good and bad.